‘Since the closure of the Jungle camp in Calais camp two years ago ... increased security measures have made life intolerable for those attempting to cross.’
Photograph: David Levene/the Guardian

Alittle girl looks out at the approaching rescue boat from inside her oversized lifejacket. Her family, huddled around her in the darkness, cling to the edges of the dinghy as it is buffeted by the waves. They are lucky to have been spotted and lucky to have survived the crossing. These nine people, including four young children, are the latest to reach Britain in what has been described as a “new” phenomenon of migrants taking to the English Channel in small boats not fit for travel.

In the past month alone, 110 people have crossed the English Channel into British waters. With more than 400 commercial ships passing through the Dover Strait every day, it is the busiest shipping thoroughfare in the world. Travelling with youngsters, in the fog and at night, packed into tiny rubber dinghies, these people are putting their lives in extreme danger.

'We want to work': refugees tell France why UK is so attractive

Read more

These crossings are not simply “new”, however, but rather the next stage in an ongoing saga of intensive border policing in northern France. If this is “new” then we must interrogate what had previously been viewed as “normal”. To understand why these dinghy crossings are occurring, we must defamiliarise ourselves from the everyday experiences of violence for those people migrating to the UK through northern France and interrogate the decisions being jointly made by the British and French governments.

The BBC has reported that the majority of those crossing the channel on boats have been Iranian, some of whom may have entered western Europe after visa-free travel to Serbia. It is thought that those fleeing religious or political persecution in Iran are likely to have more money to pay smugglers and so have more options available to them in trying to reach the UK from mainland Europe.

Yet not all those crossing the Channel are from Iran. The nine rescued on Tuesday claimed to be from Iraq. Others making the crossing earlier in the year, from other countries. Those living on the streets of Calais are mostly from war-torn Afghanistan and the deeply repressive state of Eritrea. As more successfully reach Kent by boat it will be these people, with fewer resources, who will likely be next to attempt the crossing.

In response to the emerging situation, the UK Border Force has increased patrols along the south coast. The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has said that the government is focused primarily on “identifying and dismantling” the criminal smuggling networks that operate in northern France.

While it is without doubt that people are being exploited by people smugglers in their quest to reach a safe destination (smugglers are wrongly telling those in northern France that they must enter the UK before “the borders shut properly” after Brexit, causing panic), more important is how increased border security has limited the choices people can make.

This is not the beginning of an invasion, this is a relatively small number of people responding to a desperate situation

Theresa May has invested more than £150m of public money in extra security measures – on fencing, CCTV and detection technology – to prevent another refugee camp forming in Calais. This joint cooperation with French authorities has helped to close down lorry routes, with detections down 50% since 2015. Meanwhile the government has essentially ended fast-track family reunification and blockedthe Dubs amendment – a legal route for unaccompanied minors in Europe to safely reach the UK. As these routes close down, people will take greater risks to reach their destination.

There will of course be those outraged that people are willing to put their lives in danger to make the journey to the UK from France, a supposedly “safe” country. Yet, since the closure of the Calais camp two years ago, France, under Emmanuel Macron, has toughened immigration and asylum laws. Alongside this, increased security measures have made life intolerable for those attempting to cross. In Calais, approximately 1,200 displaced people are living outside in destitute conditions, in fields and woodlands, where they are forced to create makeshift camps out of tents and tarpaulin to see them through the cold, wet nights.

While the UK government makes no direct contribution to the funding of the French CRS police force (yet has refused to disclose whether it pays equipment costs), ministers have described a “shared interest” in deterring migration from northern France, condoning the methods used. The French police enforce daily clearances in the morning hours, confiscating tents, sleeping bags, blankets and clothing and firing teargas into areas where people congregate. Human Rights Watch has reported that police use pepper spray against children and adults while they sleep and charities have documented regular instances of violence against aid workers, seemingly aimed at preventing any kind of humanitarian response.

This ongoing violence and insecurity breeds only further desperation. Last year an independent inquiry by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking found that police violence in Calais had led to greater mistrust of the authorities and increasing vulnerability of people to exploitation by smugglers and traffickers.

Those living on the streets are acutely aware that they do so because of the hostility of the French state. Rightly or wrongly, they hold out hope that life will be better for them in the UK.

Britain wilfully ignored its promise to child refugees. That shame has to end | Stella Creasy

Read more

In the two years since the closing of the “Jungle” camp in Calais, nothing has been done to find a solution for the people who found themselves living there. Crossings to the UK have become more treacherous and risky, more people have died, while others have lived miserably. Those who do reach Britain now do so after months, if not years, of street homelessness in Calais or Dunkirk, during which time they have often suffered serious physical injuries and experienced severe mental trauma.

This is not the beginning of an invasion, this is a relatively small number of people responding to a desperate situation. What is necessary to prevent people taking their lives in their own hands and crossing the Channel in rubber dinghies is a non-violent and supportive approach by the French authorities and expanded safe and legal pathways for people to seek asylum in Britain.

Hostility is clearly not working – to prevent a “new normal” we must find another way. But if deaths occur in the English Channel, and Dover’s shores start to look like those of Lampedusa, then the British and French governments will have no one to blame but themselves.

• Benny Hunter is a writer and campaigner for migrant and refugee rights